The “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks.

(Via Awful Library Books)

Nicky Harman teaches technical translation at Imperial College, London, and translates modern Chinese novels in her spare time.

There is a video interview with her at Jostrans.

See also Paper Republic, a site of resources on Chinese literature for publishers and translators, which I believe she helped seet up.

Last year I read a novel translated by Nicky and published by the University of Hawaii Press, Banished! by Han Dong. Google Books has a bit on it.

I was persuaded to buy it at Arthur Probsthain last year by Mr Probsthain when I was stocking up on translations of classical Chinese novels. Banished! is a partly autobiographical account of banishment to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. It is not strictly chronological. It starts with the family’s journey to the countryside and ends with what happened some years later, but in between the earlier story of the family is sketched in, and a number of thematically arranged chapters move from the more straightforward elements such as the choice of a village to go to, the journey to the village, and life there, to a variety of difficulties.

On the Google Books page, you can see the Notes on Translation, where Harman explains the use of terms like CultRev for the Cultural Revolution – which I found odd. I also wondered about using an exclamation mark in the title.

The novel gives a very detailed account of what the village was like, how the family planned to survive (the father’s first plan was to Strike Root, to settle the family in the village as that might be the best they could hope, and Strike Root was the meaning of the original Chinese title). It also describes the various ways people had of dealing with the Cultural Revolution and banishment, whatever their position in society. One chapter traces the history of the family’s four dogs, at least three of whom were eaten by the villagers, partly because they were better fed than most dogs. The author does not condemn the characters. He gives a rather descriptive view of life during the Cultural Revolution, through which the suffering gradually appears.

The villagers were consumed with envy at first when they saw the Taos feeding meat to their dog. Then they relaxed. They actually hoped that the Taos would fatten him up even more, into delicious dog meat. Patch was converting the Taos’ meals into food that they could eat. They had already found out that the Taos did not eat dog meat, especially not Patch’s meat (they quite understood this). But dogs were there to be eaten. If he were not, it would be a waste of a nice, fat dog.

Anyway, Google Books now allows you to read the beginning.

I had also read K – The Art of Love by Hong Ying, which I didn’t realize till now that Harman had translated. It was based on Julian Bell’s relationship with a married Chinese woman in the 1930s – see Wikipedia.

ALTA, apparently a US translation company, reports in its blog on How not to flirt in German. I can see more than one reason why not.

Kann ich dir meine Handynummer geben, gerade falls Hälle über einfriert?
Can I give you my cell number in case Hell freezes over?

(Via Musings from an overworked translator)

LATER NOTE: The texts have been changed – better German, but the humour is missing. They can be found here too.

My original German header was a bit ruder than even I intended. I tend not to use my middle initial A. but it’s there!

I suspect the Rosamunde Pilcher collection (Link removed) is a German phenomenon.

These tracks lead down the bank through the snow and across the ice on the big pond in the Stadtpark. What tracks are they? The best suggestion so far is a heron (Reiher). It’s true that there are fish in there, so maybe a heron comes down in the early morning.

There have been some reports on prizes for literary translators recently. As one of my commenters said elsewhere, it’s time we had a prize for non-literary translators! I know literary translators do a great job, but I sometimes have a reprehensible feeling of ‘How can X have the nerve to be a full-time literary translator when it doesn’t pay the rent?’ Of course if that were followed, we would probably have no authors either, so it needs rethinking.

Anyway, the Times Online reports in Found in Translation on the TLS translation prizes. It also mentions Ralph Manheim’s translation of Mein Kampf:

Ralph Manheim, an American, was commissioned to translate Mein Kampf in the early years of the Second World War. It has remained the definitive, scholarly edition of a volume that has long been banned in Germany. Its peculiar skill lies in replicating the ranting, incoherent and prolix tone of the original.

(For another early English translation, see the end of this blog entry)

That ‘banned in Germany’ is not exactly true, as has been mentioned here in comments before. The copyright is owned by the Land of Bavaria and has been relinqished for the English, Swedish and Dutch editions: I quote Wikipedia (English and German):

The government of Bavaria, in agreement with the federal government of Germany, refuses to allow any copying or printing of the book in Germany, and opposes it also in other countries but with less success. Owning and buying the book is legal. Trading in old copies is legal as well, unless it is done in such a fashion as to “promote hatred or war,” which is generally illegal under anti-revisionist laws.

The German article reports that the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte has begun to prepare a critical edition. Work began in 2009 and is expected to take about 5 years. (The copyright runs out in 2015).

The English article reports that there was a defective official translation into English, discovered in 2008:

A previously unknown English translation was discovered in 2008 which was produced by the official Nazi printing office, Franz Eher Verlag. The Nazi propaganda ministry hired James Murphy to create an English version of Mein Kampf they hoped to use to promote Nazi goals in English speaking countries. While Murphy was in Germany, he became less enchanted with Nazi ideology and made some statements the Propaganda Ministry disliked. As a result, they asked him to leave Germany immediately. He was not able to take any of his notes but later sent his wife back to obtain his partial translation.[5] These notes were later used to create the Murphy translation. The Nazi government did not abandon their English translation efforts. They used their own people to finish the translation and it was published in very small numbers in Germany. At least one copy found its way to a British/American Prisoner of War camp. This version is filled with errors including punctuation and grammar mistakes. It is however an interesting effort because it was the only official English translation produced by the Nazi government and printed on Nazi printing presses. This translation has been re-published and is available as a new printed book.

This translation is available at Project Gutenberg.

LATER NOTE: I see that a James Murphy translation appeared in the USA in 2003, so the above is not quite correct. But anyone who is interested can pursue it further! James Murphy apparently died in 1946.

EVEN LATER NOTE: A FAZ article on James Murphy can be found in the Deutsch-Österreichisches Informationsjournal (scroll down to ‘Wie die NS-Propaganda um die Gunst des englischen Publikums warb’). There is some detail about Murphy’s life in Germany.

(Thanks to Sarah for original Times link)